Page:Introductory Material to the Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/52

 President Trump’s speech to the crowd that day lasted more than an hour. The speech walked through dozens of known falsehoods about purported election fraud. And Trump again made false and malicious claims about Dominion voting systems. As discussed earlier, he again pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count lawful electoral votes, going off script repeatedly, leading the crowd to believe falsely that Pence could and would alter the election outcome: "And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: “Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage.” And then we’re stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We’re just not going to let that happen….

When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.

So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”"

This characterization of Vice President Pence’s decision had a direct impact on those who marched to and approached the Capitol, as illustrated by this testimony from a person convicted of crimes committed on January 6th: "So this woman came up to the side of us, and she, says, Pence folded. So it was kind of, like, okay. Well, in my mind I was thinking, Well, that’s it, you know. Well, my son-in-law looks at me, and he says, I want to go in."

Trump used the word “peacefully,” written by speech writers, one time. But he delivered many other scripted and unscripted comments that conveyed a very different message: "Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. . ..

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore…."

Trump also was not the only rally speaker to do these things. Mayor Giuliani for instance also said that “Let’s have trial by combat.” Likewise, John Eastman used his two minutes on the Ellipse stage to make a claim already known to be false – that corrupted voted machines stole the election.

The best indication of the impact of Trump’s words, both during the Ellipse speech and beforehand, are the comments from those supporters who attended the Ellipse rally and their conduct immediately thereafter. Videoclips show several of the attendees on their way to the Capitol or shortly after they arrived: